Maya is fickle when it comes to using movies as a texture. Uncompressed AVI's are best, but files size is an issue. IT also depends on the compression/codec that the AVI uses. Bootleg videos tend not to work in most occasions. My students are notorious for this and I have to tell them every time, "Go buy the DVD". It's something with the way they're compressed.

Image sequences are best. You can't go wrong with loading a sequence of jpg's, tga's, or tiff's. But here's the kicker... The image sequence numbers and the start frame in Maya have to be the same.


Example: Let's say you've rendered some frames from a shot that starts at frame 200. If you plug the sequence in and try to play it, it won't work. You must set the timeline in Maya to start at frame 200 first, then it will work.


When you create the material node and click on the map button, choose the MOVIE TEXTURE from the Create Render Node menu that pops up. Then, in the attribute editor for that texture ( Which should also pop up - if it doesn't, dbl-click on the material in the hypershade to open it then go to the Movie # tab) plug the movie in by clicking on the folder icon listed under the File Attributes section. Next, click on Use Image Sequence. The image number should turn purple/pink (depending on your version) and the movie should play.

Now, here's the weird thing. I've found that sometimes the movie will work fine at first but then stops playing. If it does, un-check Use Image Sequence and play it. It surprisingly will work.